A 34-year-old man was arrested this week after he pepper-sprayed another moviegoer at a Burbank AMC theater for using a cellphone during a film, police said.<\/p>\n
Lt. Brent Fekety, a Burbank Police spokesman, said officers were summoned about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to the AMC 16 theater, which is nestled in the middle of the bustling entertainment district.<\/p>\n
They arrested Matthew Ware of Los Angeles on suspicion of misdemeanor battery and later booked him into the Burbank Jail. <\/p>\n
Online jail records show he was released the following morning.<\/p>\n
A moviegoer told KTLA-TV that he called the police after he heard the hissing sound of an aerosol spray, moments before someone screamed that they had been pepper-sprayed. Police found Ware in the lobby and arrested him. Images posted on social media showed officers handcuffing a man wearing cargo shorts and a black T-shirt from the \u201cTerrifier\u201d horror franchise. <\/p>\n
At least two other moviegoers were treated at a hospital for exposure to the spray, KTLA reported.<\/p>\n
Predictably, the incident prompted scores of sometimes snarky comments on social media.<\/p>\n
Some commenters rushed to Ware\u2019s defense, airing their own frustrations and experiences with people who violate an unwritten but sacrosanct rule among serious filmgoers: Phones need to be silenced and stay off during a movie.<\/p>\n
Others were less sympathetic.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople on their phones in the theater are beyond idiots, but you cannot go pepper spraying them,\u201d one user wrote on X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 34-year-old man was arrested this week after he pepper-sprayed another moviegoer at a Burbank AMC theater for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[184762,184763,184766,184764,4407,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,1555,184760,4287,184761,592,14220,236,184765,4412],"class_list":["post-469489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-aerosol-spray","tag-battery-charge","tag-cargo-short","tag-fellow-filmgoer","tag-ktla","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-man","tag-matthew-ware","tag-movie","tag-moviegoer","tag-people","tag-phone","tag-police","tag-snarky-comment","tag-social-medium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}